Eric Counsel Jr. is accused of helping to hack the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's X account in order to post false information about Bitcoin.
The 25-year-old’s alleged actions in the days after the attack suggest he was not exactly a criminal mastermind. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Council conducted a series of suspicious internet searches, for phrases like “SECGOV hack,” “telegram swap,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “What are the signs you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
Clickbait title. Makes it sound like he was arrested for searching the term. He was arrested for hacking the SEC account. He later searched for "how do I know if the FBI is investigating me".
No it doesn’t sound like that at all. It sounds like they’re having a bit of a laugh at the fact that he was in fact being investigated by the FBI when he did that search.
I recently saw a thread fawning over regular posters without much critical thought to standards for editors in the age of meme-based reporting. The 90s yutes, upset about their aunts' chain mail emails' claims about artificial sweeteners and theology, ran to the Internet in search of Truth but stumbled into a breeding ground for misinformation. Oop!
I'm still talking about standards of reporting, and pointing out that Internet culture tends to be especially vocal about truth and science while amplifying the same ol' sensationalism and romanticism.
Okay? Well I wasn't doing that. I was posting a bit of news that I thought people would find amusing. It was clear from the headline that it was basically fluff news. You could easily have just skipped it.
A better title would have been "Man arrested by FBI for SEC hack had searched 'How to know for sure if you are being investigated by the FBI'."That would eliminate the incorrect implication.